Being Awake During Your Tickle Lipo Procedure- Why is this Important

General anesthesia, you’re asleep. That implies again that you’re having more often a traditional liposuction procedure done. Those instruments are going to be upwards of 7 to 9 to actually 1cm in diameter. They are going to be sharp to be able to hold the suction. The doctor has to push, jab this instrument through your tissues.

Everybody knows of the video that they see on Youtube or Health Channel or Discovery all these doctors jamming something through. It happens every day. It is still a very common way to do liposuction.

That doctor is putting fluid into those tissues. Not really local anesthesia fluid because you’re already asleep. It doesn’t need local anesthesia. He needs a ton of fluid to go in there to stretch the tissues so that when he’s jamming his thing through, there’s enough tautness on the tissues so it cuts and slices through more easily than if there’s too much give.

Let’s imagine a doctor pushing something through tissues with a lot of resistance. The doctor is going to do this for so long. I’ve talked to plastic surgeons who have done these traditional liposuction and they’ll basically change their scrub between cases because they’re sweating so much.

I mean it’s a hard procedure for them to do. It’s a lot of trauma for you to experience. And because of that chunking and cutting that goes on with the traditional procedure, more bleeding post procedure, more bruising post procedure, more pain post procedure, more downtime post procedure, more downtime procedure, potential for irregular results post procedure, waviness to your tissues. It’s not a good exchange of your cash for that kind of result and that kind of experience.

I mean you need to either be awake for surgical procedure or you can be asleep for surgical procedure. Obviously, your sleep is called general anesthesia. For awake, for our purposes, it is called tumescent anesthesia or local anesthesia.

General anesthesia has more inherent risk than being awake. There is a risk of medication. There is risk of putting it too down your throat. There is major complications of interaction with drugs during a general anesthesia procedure. There is a higher significant death rate with general anesthesia that the population really doesn’t know about but it is still out there.

So it is not just the same procedure everybody goes asleep, everybody wakes up. Occasionally, that doesn’t happen. So to be awake for procedure is much safer. Obviously, in an office-based setting, it is your only choice. And you’re only putting anesthesia in the area that they are treating. So there is nothing systemic or whole body about what we’re doing. It is all localized to the area that we treat. So it is an extremely safe form of anesthesia, extremely safe way to undergo a procedure and get the outcome that you’re looking for. They are to walk in the door, walk out the door, go home with minimal downtime and back to work as soon as you need to be back to work.

It was interesting, I did a gentleman. Actually he was a CEO of a company. He actually gave me a testimonial about his procedure. And one of the things that he brought up and actually in retrospect I heard from other patients is that he was able to know that the area that he wanted worked was actually being because he was awake and for him, he was watching the procedure. Some patients don’t want to watch. Some patients will watch but at least you’re sure that “I’m paying for this area. It better be done”.
Because I’ve had patients come in, after having liposuction done in a hospital-based setting, general anesthesia, and they’ll tell me: “Well, I had my belly and my sides and my back done. And I just think of the results, I should have gotten I though from my back. My belly is a little bit irregular but my back and my sides don’t look like it have been done.” And I go and look for the incisions where they should have entered to do the procedure and there are none.

So, I mean, and I’m not saying this is a tempt to rip patients off by the doctors. I’m just saying that I don’t think sometimes all the areas are done as thoroughly when you’re asleep versus the knowledge that “I want that area done. I’m awake. He’s doing the area. Obviously, I’m getting what I want.” So it is just a way of assuring you’re getting what you want for the price you pay.

He was actually watching his whole procedure thoroughly. He was very interested on how it is being done because he had it traditionally done before and he wasn’t happy with the results. And this way, he could actually direct and say: “You know, at this point, this is area you’re doing. This is what wasn’t done properly and I want to make sure that you’re doing it right this time.

So he can watch the area, watch it go down in size and be very pleased that it is being done and done to his specifications.